Wednesday on The View, the panel made some wild predictions about what would happen during Donald Trump’s presidency. But not before making some clearly factually inaccurate statements. The panel blamed Trump for supposedly taking away people’s health insurance already before warning that Mike Pence was going to take away women’s rights and LGBT rights.
Whoopi Goldberg started off the discussion by hyping the notion that Trump and the GOP presidency was going to take away insurance from a lot of people when they repealed the Affordable Care Act. Goldberg then blamed Trump for her friend losing her health insurance and tax benefits...even though Trump isn’t even in office yet.
WHOOPI: I think his attention span is that of a gnat, you know. I think he's forgotten about her. But I think he's going to get a little more attention when people start opening their envelopes and seeing those letters about their insurance dropping them because they're losing their -- what we call Obamacare. And boy is that going to be -- I just had a friend who got this and she has her kid and the doctor sent a note and said, oh, we're not going to be able to cover you anymore, so sorry. She said I've got a little money, I can do this and they were like, no, you have to sort of get this kind of coverage, coverage she can't afford. This is going to be really interesting, Donald. I can't wait until people start sending you their letters and tweets about that. [ Applause ]
Behar jumped in to add that Trump’s fans might be in “the honeymoon period now” but they were going to regret it soon, when things are not as they hoped. Whoopi stated that it had already started (somehow).
WHOOPI: It's hitting the fan. People are starting to get it. People are starting to get those e-mails and letters saying oh, by the way we're not going to be taking care of this anymore, because we basically don’t have to.
Whoopi then went on to make a claim about tax deductions that is factually inaccurate but no one on the panel corrected her.
WHOOPI: Then she said something and I don't know about it so I'm going to ask you, she said she thought she had read that they were losing the head of households deduction.
HOSTIN: Tax deductions?
WHOOPI: Tax deduction.
HOSTIN: Oh, I haven't heard that.
WHOOPI: We have to look that up because she said she wasn't sure and that scared her.
Actually, there is no such thing as a head of household deduction. You can file as a head of household in your filing status with the IRS, which will get you a lower tax rate, but that is not the same as a deduction. But stating things accurately isn’t The View’s strong suit.
The panel shifted the doom and gloom discussion to add Trump’s VP Mike Pence to the discussion. Joy Behar wondered, would Mike Pence become President, when the GOP invariably got tired of fighting Trump? Whoopi responded:
WHOOPI: Watch your uterus. That's all I’m saying.
After the audience applauded, co-host Sunny Hostin added that Pence was also an enemy of gays. She brought up the debunked claim that Pence was for “conversion therapy.” Co-host Sara Haines fretted that Pence “had a lot of legislation against the LGBT” and she was worried because, “like, that’s a personal, big issue for me.” Behar then ranted about how she didn’t understand “conversion therapy” to begin with.
BEHAR: Here's the thing on conversion therapy. I would like to ask a heterosexual man, could you go to becoming a homosexual? Could you switch back to being gay? Because, they’re saying gay people can become straight well can straight people become gay?
HOSTIN: Exactly, exactly. [ Applause ] Because he believes you can pray the gay away.
BEHAR: Pray the straight away!
HAINES: That would mean that factually you accept that they’re born that way and that mindset is that they have been made gay or something crazy. [shakes head]
BEHAR: Maybe Pence has been made straight. [laughter] It doesn't make any sense.
